Antistatic International Festival Gets Us Closer With 15 Dance Events

Antistatic International Festival

On May 28th in Sofia, the 14th edition of Antistatic International Festival for Contemporary Dance and Performance began to bring us closer with an exciting 10-day event schedule.


The choreographer Paula Rosolen (Germany) will be in Bulgaria for the Antistatic International Festival opening, with her project dedicated to Merce Cunningham – one of the most influential choreographers in the world – who has overturned our notions of dance. 2019 marked the 100 year anniversary of Cunningham’s birth and to mark the occasion, leading dance institutions and partners in Germany joined forces with Paula Rosolen to pay tribute to the dance legend. Their project included over 100 dancers and choreographers, embodying Cunningham’s principles in a massive open air performance with live music. In Sofia, the choreographer has chosen to work with the musician Emilian Gatsov-Elbi and with 20 Bulgarian performers of all ages and experience, in order to create the Bulgarian version of Hommage an Merce Cunningham. The event begins at 7:00pm, May 28th, in front of the Sofia Arsenal – Museum for Contemporary Art. Admission is free, and it can be seen only once. You can also take this opportunity to see the exhibition “The Herbarium as a Place for Storing Ideas” at the museum.

Antistatic International Festival 2021 - Sofia, Bulgaria
Antistatic International Festival Program 2021

On June 2nd at 6:00pm, during the Antistatic International Festival 2021, the dance atmosphere will invade bar Schrodinger (Sofia), where the premiere of vol. 3 of the only annual Dance Magazine in Bulgaria will take place. The topic of the volume is “The Dance and the Political” and its 120 pages offer a wide variety of viewpoints to it, as well as to other dance dimensions, connected to the past, present, and future of contemporary dance, classical ballet. and dance culture. The issue begins with the Bulgarian translation of a message from Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker – a choreographer, performer, and teacher, one of the most established figures of contemporary dance. Addressing the international artist community at the peak of the pandemic, she summarises: “We worry about proximity to others, we worry about touch, we worry about being surrounded by a community, we worry about sharing breath. Unfortunately, these very things (proximity, touch, community, and breath) are all essential to the DNA of dance. This crisis hits not only our practice, but who we are.” The magazine continues with a much needed discussion, from which no professional community should run away, namely the COVID-effect on the dance scene. In its pages the magazine also touches on a number of hot topics and questions raised by leading Bulgarian and foreign researchers, thinkers, critics, artists, and managers, as well as offering close encounters with crucial people from the Bulgarian and European dance scene.

The 14th edition of Antistatic International Festival does not relent in the sustainable development of its educational platform Without Distance, which this time includes three workshops – with Megan Bridge (USA), Dragana Alfirević and Dejan Srhoj (Serbia/Slovenia), and Tomi Paasonen (Germany), as well as meeting with artists and three exclusive conversations with choreographers and culture managers from France and Germany. On May 31st at 5.00pm, on the festival’s YouTube channel and Facebook page, begins “To Celebrate the moment”, a conversation with the choreographer Mark Tompkins, who visited Sofia for the first time as a guest of Antistatic festival with the project Hommages – a tribute to Vaslav Nijinski, Valeska Gert, Josephine Baker, and Harry Sheppard. This conversation will be dominated by ideas of the flow of time, memory, age, past, and how they feature in his pieces.

The second online meeting of the series will be available on the same channels, on June 2nd, at 5.00pm, with the German choreographer Silke Z. as guest. The conversation with her is dedicated to dance as a language of dialogue between generations. Silke Z. lives and works as an independent choreographer in Cologne. She is the artistic director of the company for intergenerational dance Silke Z./ Resistdance and the director of a space for intergenerational dance and performance in Cologne.

The third meeting is coming on June 4th, at 5:00pm, again on Antistatic’s channels on Facebook and YouTube. It is with the culture manager and producer Madeline Ritter and with the participation of philosopher Boyan Manchev. Madeline Ritter is a lawyer, art manager and curator in the field of dance, as well as the founder of the dance company Dance On. With it she shows a different perspective on age, including that of dance professionals over 40 – as an uninterrupted process of growth and development that every person goes through, and as a state of constant motion.

The three events are part of the Tempus Fugit project, organized by Goethe-Institut Bulgaria
and the Institut Francais in Bulgaria, based on an idea by Metheor, in the framework of the Franco-German Cultural Fund. They are an attempt to examine the many intersections of time, age, and dance and are realized in partnership with Antistatic Festival.

Besides online meetings, however, there will not be a lack of in-person meetings with artists – they will be conducted at the end of every performance with the teams from the Antistatic International Festival programme. In conversation with the audience will be Megan Bridge (USA), Paula Rosolen (Germany), Tomi Paasonen (Germany), Willy Prager (Bulgaria/Romania) and Simona Deaconescu (Romania). Within the festival, a meeting with a continuation will also happen with the French choreographer Kevin Jean, who first attended the festival with Des
Paradis in 2017.

Antistatic International Festival Tickets

Tickets for the paid events from Antistatic’s programme are already on sale online at EPAYGO.BG for 10 lv., as well as at Ticket center – NDK, Derida Stage, EASY PAY, and EPAYGO.BG on the day of the performance for 15 lv.
More details on Antistatic’s programme can be found on antistaticfestival.org, as well as in Instagram, Facebook, and on Antistatic’s YouTube channel.

The Festival programme will be held in accordance with the current anti-epidemic measures

Antistatic International Festival for Contemporary Dance and Performance 2021 is organized by: Brain Store Project Foundation, Inform Bureau Association, Nomad Dance Academy

Bulgaria, with the financial support of National Culture Fund; Sofia Municipality; Goethe-Institut Bulgarien; NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ – International Guest Performance Fund for Dance, which is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media; Art Office Foundation; National Palace for Culture, DNK – Space for contemporary dance and performance, Derida Stage and Sofia Arsenal – Museum for Contemporary Art.
Without Distance Platform is part of the project „Life Long Burning (LLB) – Towards a sustainable Eco-System for Contemporary Dance in Europe”, co-funded by the Creative Europe Program of the European Union and National Culture Fund. It is realized in partnership with the Tempus Fugit project, organized by the Goethe-Institut Bulgarien and the French Institute of Bulgaria, based on an idea from the Metheor artistic collective, in the frame of thе French-German Cultural Fund.

See more information about the event.

For additional information and interviews: Ina Doublekova (+359 889 61 61 43) and Kremena Hristova (+359 887 24 70 21) – A25 Cultural Foundation or at info@a25cultfound.org

The Media partners

The Bulgarian News Agency, bTV Radio, Dir.bg § Impressio.bg, Jasmin.bg web portal , Kafene.bg , Portal for culture, arts and society “Culture”, Vij! Sofia Magazine for art and culture, Madamebulgaria.com, Uspelite.bg, Atrakcia.bg web platform, Licatanagrada.bg web platform, web platform Mika Magazine, Lovetheater.bg platform for theater, website for culture Въпреки.com, Sofia in your pocket city guide.

Madame Bulgaria is a webzine launched in June 2016 in English. Its aim is to show to the world how Bulgaria is a very nice country, full of potential. We cover all kind of topics – Lifestyle, Culture, Places, Food, People, Tourism, Beauty, Fashion, Business, Ecosystem, and More. We try to be as objective as possible. Madame Bulgaria crew works every week to offer a new, fresh and dynamic content on Bulgaria.

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Marie is the founder of Madame Bulgaria. She fell in love with Bulgaria when she came for the first time for a weekend in 2012.

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Madame Bulgaria is a webzine proposing attractives contents about Bulgaria. We write stories of Lifestyle, Culture, Places, Food, People, Tourism, Beauty, Fashion, Business, Ecosystem, and More.